Retaining wall

“ But dark-red and worn and ancient as the midmost mountain-sides
Is the wall that goeth about them; and its mighty compass hides
Full many a dwelling of man whence the reek now goeth aloft,
And the voice of the house-abiders, the sharp sounds blent with the soft:
But one house in the midst is unhidden and high up o'er the wall it goes ”

“ The unbroken line of this wall makes a solid base for the whole building, which gets lighter and lighter as it ascends to the top, where numerous feathery pinnacles impart softness and richness to the extremity that meets the sky. ”

“ The wall is of superbly solid and intensely "toned" brickwork and of extraordinary breadth, and its summit, planted with goodly trees and swelling here and there into bastions and outworks and little open gardens, surrounds the city with a circular lounging-place of a splendid dignity. ”

“ By 'dry walls' are to be understood walls built without mortar or cement, of irregular, unhewn flagstones, so put together, so wedged in one with another, as to stand firm where a cemented wall might give way exposed to the high winds of those elevated regions, the very crevices allowing the blasts to pass through, and so reduce the pressure on the mass. ”

“ On some the rustic work remains, on others there are but slight traces of it, and after a very minute and careful examination, I think that there has been an attempt to destroy it on all, with the intention of smoothing the face of the wall: these blocks are all laid with mortar, but not arranged in regular courses; and the wall is perpendicular to the ground. ”

“ The words are the ancientest language of trees—
They tell of how earth and air and light
Are wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness.
I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark;
Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves;
Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring.
This wall was builded in our fathers days—
Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new.
Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn. ”

“ Not a wall that is not stripped of its plaster, which hangs in great layers, like veils torn off by the storm. Not a straight line in all those buildings, which lean against one another and seem on the point of crumbling together. ”

“ To counteract any overturning tendency, a wall should have a large bearing area under the face portion, all projections and heavy copings should be avoided, or anything that increases the load near the face at the top. ”

“ The Great Wall, which has now, even in its best parts, numerous breaches, is made of two walls of brick and masonry, not above a foot and a half in thickness, and generally many feet apart; the interval between them is filled up with earth, making the whole appear like solid masonry and brickwork. ”

“ Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." ”

“ It withstood the shock of war, it was not flung down by soldiers marching against it. But to the people who wanted to build castles or houses or farms, or even to mend roads, the wall offered a mass of material ready to hand, and it suffered not from man's energy so much as from his laziness. Century after century it was robbed of its stones; to-day a series of long grass-grown mounds, a few feet high, running across the meadows, are nearly all that remain of one of the most wonderful pieces of building that was ever erected in Great Britain. ”

“ Consequently, the only portion of this debateable building at present open to view is the portion of old wall originally above ground. This weather-beaten fragment bears upon its southern face evidence of having been connected with other buildings, for the springing of three brick arches are very plainly visible upon it, and the spade of the excavator has traced out the underground walls that supported them. ”

“ From the yard the wall ran up to a good height—to the children it seemed immense, as high as the tower of Babel, though were they to go back now and look at it I dare say they would find it quite insignificant, for walls have a curious way of decreasing an inch or two with every year one grows older. ”

“ A narrow and well-trodden path leads through the breach in the wall; the pebbles are thickly strewn with brown dust, and the footway leads past quantities of blocks of stone and portions of columns destined for the construction of a new building which seems only to have been intermitted the night before, for mallets and levers lie on and near the various materials. ”

“ The top of the wall is flat, and paved with broad freestones; and where it rises over a rock, or any eminence, you ascend by a fine easy stone stair. The bridges over rivers and torrents are exceedingly neat, being both well contrived and executed. They have two stories of arches, one above another, to afford sufficient passage for the waters on sudden rains and floods.”
Bell was also informed by the Chinese that this wall was completed within the space of five years; every sixth man in the empire having been compelled to work at it, or find a substitute. ”

“ They consider it clever to heave these over with a splash into the water, or to throw down half a dozen yards of ‘dry wall.’ In many places fields are commonly enclosed by the roadside with such walls, which are built of a flat stone dug just beneath the surface, and used without mortar. ”

“ These industrious feathered workers first of all remove from the place all obstacles to their design; they take up the stones with their bills and carry them to the boundaries to compose the wall. Within this wall they build a perfectly smooth and even foot-path some six or eight feet wide, which is used by day as a public promenade, and by night for the back and forward march of the sentinels. ”

“ It is difficult to conceive how any person can traverse the line of the Barrier without coming to the conclusion, that all the works—Vallum, Wall and fosse, turrets, castles, stations, and outposts—are but so many parts of one great design, essential to each other, and unitedly contributing to the security of a dangerous frontier. ”

“ Hence the general style of construction of wall, even in first-class buildings, consists of a coarse, short-bedded, ill-laid rubble masonry, with great thickness of mortar joints, very thick walls, without any attention to thorough bonding whatever. The opes of windows and doors often have cut limestone jambs, lintels, and dressings, which are but ill connected with the rest of the walls. ”

“ They are built entirely of rough stone, laid without mortar. I reckon on an average that each wall retains a terrace not more than twice its own height in width, and I do not think I saw a single breach in one of them unrepaired. ”

“ How she searches for the vulnerable points in your structure, the weak places in your foundation, the defective material in your building!
The farmer's stone wall, when well built, stands about as long as he does. It begins to reel and look decrepit when he begins to do so. ”

“ Yes; the material in the Great Wall, including the earth in the middle of it, is said to be more than enough to surround the circumference of the earth, on two of its great circles, with two walls of six feet high and two feet thick. Guards are stationed in the strong towers by which the wall is fortified; every important pass having a strong fortress. ”

“ Arches one foot deep may be made in the wall for aumbries, or cupboards.
4. If one of two neighbours wishes to build a party wall of stone, and the other is too poor to join him, then the latter shall give the former three feet of his own land to build upon. But not for the purpose of narrowing or stopping any doorway, inlet, outlet, or shop.
5. If a man build a stone wall, at his own expense, sixteen feet high, his neighbour must make a gutter under the eaves of the house and so carry off the rain water. ”

“ On the declivity of a steep hill, the bottom and sides of which were fenced so as to be impassable, a wall was constructed nearly level with the surface on the outside, yet so high within that without wings it was impossible to escape in the opposite direction. ”

“ The wall runs down in crumbling cadence
Beside the brook which plays
Through the land like a silver harp.
A wind of ancient romance blows across the field,
A sweet disturbance thrills the air;
The silken skirts of Spring go rustling by,
And the earth is astir with joy.
Up the hill, romping and shaking their golden heads,
Come the little children of the wood.
From ecstasy to ecstasy the year mounts upward. ”

“ On the extreme peak of the height a wall has been built around the edge, the descent on one side being so vertical that a false step might hurl one to instant destruction. At this wall we dismounted and lingered long, unwilling to leave the beautiful view before sunset. ”

“ Suppose a man building with good, square, well-burnt bricks; without the use of mortar he may build a wall of a certain height and stability. But if his bricks are warped and cracked or broken, the wall cannot be of the same height and stability. ”

“ Rising the hill to Walwick, the village is delightful, and the prospect most charming. At the corner of a garden-wall, I saw a beautiful pedestal, pannelled, moulded, and fluted, in perfection, two feet by eighteen inches; no doubt a Roman relick, degraded to a shabby prop, as a thing of no value. ”

“ I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. ”

“ The highest wall of my house was no higher than the ten-foot fence we had already built on the church alley. The western wall, if, indeed, a frame house has any walls, was only eight feet high. For foundations and sills, I dug deep post-holes, in which I set substantial cedar posts which I knew would outlast my day, and I framed my sills into these. ”

“ When a poor-class house is carried more than one story high, the upper stories, often projecting beyond the lower, are framed with wooden beams—poplar—and the interspaces filled in with sun-dried bricks, making a wall one brick thick. The builder never trusts to the lower wall alone to support a second or third story, but invariably fixes uprights of wood in the ground against the wall to support the first floor. ”

“ The Great Wall runs along the ridge of hills in a direction nearly east and west; where it crosses the town it is kept in good repair, but elsewhere it is very much in ruins, and could offer little resistance to an enemy. ”

“ Plain walls, whether painted, tinted, or papered, are more restful in effect and form better backgrounds than figured walls. This is not a question of the beauty of the design or the expense of the material, but simply the fact that a plain surface is quiet, while a figured wall, even if only two-toned, will at once assert itself more, and so be less of a background. ”

“ there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. ”

“ The wall rises boldly as we approach the central portion of the barrier, which, in harmony with the scenery, pursues a more determined course, and presents itself in more imposing masses. Where the wall tops the crown of the crag, the north fosse disappears, and the vallum follows the course of the wall at the bases of the hills. Those inaccessible precipices offer to the north a barrier to which the wall cannot have added strength, and it must have been carried over them chiefly to shelter the guards and sentinels against the bitter northern blast. ”

“ The wall is of immense thickness, and is propped or defended by six huge external buttresses which project from the circle, and rise up against the sides of the tower as if to strengthen or to support it. ”

“ They are shaded darkly in our plan because they are fairly well built; but although they are better built than most of the secondary walls, yet they are not equal in point of execution to the great outer wall and the towers, and their lines, too, are not so regular as those of the original walls generally are. ”

“ I give the elevation of the wall from the gate at B' to the point where it joins the scarp of the fosse at A'. The dressed masonry does not rest on the rock, but on rough rubble built on the rock. The base of the wall may be seen to rise rapidly. ”

“ Every external wall or enclosing wall of habitable rooms or their appurtenances or cellars which abuts against the earth shall be protected by materials impervious to moisture to the satisfaction of the district surveyor..." "The top of every party-wall and parapet-wall shall be finished with one course of hard, well-burnt bricks set on edge, in cement, or by a coping of any other waterproof and fire-resisting material, properly secured." ”

“ The north fosse, which we have had in view from the very commencement of our journey, accompanies the Wall for a short distance up the hill, as is seen in the lithograph, but when the ground becomes precipitous, it forsakes it until the high grounds are passed, only to appear when the Wall sinks into a gap or chasm between the crags. ”

“ A thatched and patched roof, with walls of alternate layers of turf and stone, and mid-walls or hallens of clay and straw, quite Egyptian manufacture, were all the go; and if any one, more advanced and uppish than his neighbours, got the length of a stone and clay wall, with a wooden partition within, he was deemed uncommonly appointed, as times went. ”

“ The beaten-earth walls are pierced with a single opening for a low door enframed in ornamental work, occupying the whole height of the wall. Clay mouldings also embellish tlie edge of the terraced roof. ”

“ It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown or cornice most of all. ”